N&O readers mad at dropped stock listings

The (Raleigh) News & Observer intentionally made some of its readers made by dropping its stock listings, noted ombudsman Ted Vaden in his Sunday column. (Fair Disclosure: Vaden is a neighbor of mine.)

Vaden wrote that some readers stated that they would drop their subscription or be forced to take another paper. He also quoted me as saying that I was worried that newspaper managers would go to the business section the next time they needed to cut.

Vaden wrote, “Myself, I worry not so much about the future of business news, but about the trend of news space-cutting in general. The reduction in business pages amounts to two pages a day, Tuesday through Friday, saving about $200,000 a year. That comes on top of three pages cut from the Sunday Work & Money section earlier this year, six pages a week from the regular news and sports sections and four pages from the weekly Channels TV magazine.

“With the stock cuts, news space this year had been reduced about 6 percent from a year earlier, according to Sill, the executive editor. She points out that the paper still publishes about 16,000 pages of news a year and that the ratio of news to advertising remains the same. That’s because advertising space also is down from a year ago. Orage Quarles III, the N&O publisher, says the newspaper ‘will always devote space to important stories as needed.'”

Read more here.